querystring.stringify can't deal with nested objects

[Hamms]

require('querystring').stringify({foo : {bar : 'baz'}})

Should return

`````` 'foo[bar]=baz'```

But instead returns
'foo='

[isaacs]

It used to do this. It was terrible.

Use npm install qs, or use foo[bar] as the key in your object.

[AD7six]

If that behaviour is deliberate and desired it would be useful if at least a warning was issued. Otherwise unless you parse and check the result you don't know that a (potentially big) chuck of info just went missing.

[isaacs]

I agree. Wanna try a patch and send a pull request? Should be about one line. Make sure to sign the CLA: http://nodejs.org/cla.html

[AD7six]

sure thing. #1691 created I hope that's an appropriate change.

[thatmarvin]

I'm curious—why was it terrible?

[josser]

I'm curious too, why this was changed?

Here the use-case:
I want to make a post on the wall via facebook graph api:

Post data:
{message: "something on the wall", privacy:{ value: "CUSTOM", friends: "SELF"}}

So how I can stringify this data and pass result to request module?

[kaore]

Why was it terrible?

[ownagedj]

Why hasn't this been resolved?

[MichaelArnoldOwens]

What's going on with this issue?

[mrdulin]

const querystring = require('querystring');

const nestedObj = {
    foo: {
        bar: {
            baz: 'fk'
        }
    }
};

const otherNestedObj = {
    foo: {
        bar: 'fk'
    }
}

const simpleObj = {
    foo: 'bar'
}


console.log('nested object: ' + querystring.stringify(nestedObj));
console.log('other nested object: ' + querystring.stringify(otherNestedObj));
console.log('simple object: ' + querystring.stringify(simpleObj));

result:

dulindeiMac:querystring dulin$ node -v
v6.2.0
dulindeiMac:querystring dulin$ node index.js 
nested object: foo=
other nested object: foo=
simple object: foo=bar

[lilyszhang]

Has this issue been fixed, or is it still necessary to use npm install qs?

[TimothyGu]

@lilyszhang No. If you want to use the nested syntax, use qs.

Why was it terrible?

• No standard specifying the behavior of nested objects, and corner cases are much more abundant than one might imagine.
• Space and time complexity. Handling query[a][b][c][][d][3][weird]=2 is slow and complex no matter how you turn it.
• Node.js core tries to be unopinionated, leaving higher level abstractions to the npm ecosystem.

BTW, it was removed in 422d3c9.